Time limits on permissions and how to keep one alive

A full planning permission in England normally has to be begun within three years of the date it was granted, under section 91 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Miss that date and the permission is gone. There is no renewal application any more, so the only route back is a fresh application judged against whatever policy applies on the day it is decided, which for most sites is a materially harder test than the one the original scheme passed.

Check the date on the front of your decision notice now. The condition is usually condition 1, and it will state the exact deadline.

The standard three-year limit and where it comes from

Section 91 requires every permission to carry a condition setting the period within which development must be begun, with three years as the default. A council can impose a shorter or longer period where it has a reason, and does so occasionally on temporary permissions or where a site is constrained by a phasing agreement.

If no condition appears on the notice, the three-year limit applies automatically by statute rather than being waived. That catches people out on older permissions where the drafting was loose.

Listed building consent runs on its own clock under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, again with a three-year default. Where a scheme needs both consents and they were granted on different dates, the earlier of the two is the one that constrains you.

Different limits for outline and reserved matters

Outline permissions work on a two-stage timetable set by section 92, and the two stages are frequently confused.

The reserved matters are access, appearance, landscaping, layout and scale. Where they are approved on different dates, the two-year clock runs from the approval of the last one, which can give a little more time than people expect.

Read the outline permission itself, because councils often shorten these periods by condition. A condition requiring reserved matters within eighteen months is lawful and enforceable, and it appears more often on allocated sites than you would think.

Whether a permission can be renewed

It cannot. The application to extend the time limit on an existing permission was introduced in 2009 as a recession measure and withdrawn on 1 October 2010. Nothing replaced it.

Nor can you use section 73 to buy time. Section 73(5) expressly prevents a permission being granted under that section where the effect would be to extend the period within which development must be begun. Applications that attempt it are refused or returned.

So the choice at the end of a permission is binary. Either you implement it lawfully before the deadline, or you make a fresh application and accept the policy position of the day.

That policy position is the real risk. A permission granted in 2022 predates mandatory biodiversity net gain, which applied to major development from 12 February 2024 and to small sites from 2 April 2024. A fresh application for the same scheme now needs the statutory metric completed by a competent person and a biodiversity gain plan approved before development begins. A Biodiversity Net Gain Assessment alone can add several weeks and a real cost to a scheme that carried no such obligation three years ago.

Local plan changes, new national policy, a changed housing land supply position and a newly designated conservation area can all shift the balance too. The scheme that was approved is not necessarily the scheme that would be approved.

Implementing to preserve the permission

Once development has lawfully begun, the permission is implemented and does not expire, even if the site then sits untouched for years.

Beginning development means carrying out a material operation as defined by section 56 of the 1990 Act, and the list is narrower than most people assume. Digging the trench that will hold the foundations counts. Demolition of a building forming part of the permitted scheme counts. Laying part of an approved estate road counts. Clearing the site, stripping topsoil, putting up hoarding and delivering materials do not.

The operation also has to be lawful. Work carried out in breach of a pre-commencement condition is generally not capable of implementing the permission, which is why the condition schedule matters more than the calendar in the final months.

Conditions that block an early start

Go through the decision notice and split the conditions into those that bite before development begins and everything else. The pre-commencement set is your critical path.

Common blockers on a small residential scheme:

1. Approval of a biodiversity gain plan under the Environment Act 2021 regime.
2. Contamination investigation and, where needed, a remediation strategy.
3. Tree protection measures agreed and installed before machinery arrives, following the BS 5837 approach.
4. A construction management plan or construction traffic routing.
5. Details of surface water drainage agreed with the lead local flood authority.
6. Archaeological written scheme of investigation where the site sits in a sensitive area.

Each of those is a separate application to the council with its own fee and an eight-week determination period, and councils rarely determine them early. Some can run in parallel. Ecology cannot, because survey windows are fixed by the species: bat emergence surveys run from May to September, great crested newt environmental DNA sampling between 15 April and 30 June, and reptile surveys April to October with the best results in spring and early autumn.

Where an ecology condition is outstanding in November, the honest answer is that the earliest lawful start may be the following summer. Plan for that rather than discovering it.

Planning the last six months

Work backwards from the expiry date with a simple sequence.

1. List every pre-commencement condition and the exact information each one requires.
2. Identify which depend on a seasonal survey and check the window against the calendar.
3. Commission the reports, allowing four to six weeks for specialist work.
4. Submit the discharge applications together, allowing eight weeks, plus a contingency for the council asking for more.
5. Confirm in writing that the conditions are discharged before any machine goes on site.
6. Carry out the material operation, photograph it with dates, and keep the invoices.
7. Notify the case officer of the start, and where CIL applies, serve the commencement notice first.

If the timetable does not work, decide early between rushing a start and preparing a fresh application. A fresh application submitted in good time, with the current evidence base and a Planning Statement that deals with the policy changes since the original grant, is usually a better outcome than a disputed implementation that the council later refuses to accept.

One honest uncertainty is worth naming. Councils can serve a completion notice where a development has begun but will not be completed within a reasonable period, and the procedure was amended by the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023. Completion notices remain rare, but a long-dormant implemented permission is not entirely risk-free, so check the current procedure if you are relying on a start made years ago.

Browse the 66 report types by category to work out which documents your outstanding conditions will call for, and start the seasonal ones first.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.